Ryan Peter. Writer.

Ghostwriter. Author. Journalist.

All Those Sins are Washed Away

One of the hardest things to believe in Christianity is that, quite simply, all our sins are forgiven and washed away through simply asking God to forgive us.

We complicate this endlessly. But the Bible is emphatic — our sins are washed away by the blood of the Lamb.

If they are washed away when you become a Christian, they are washed away as you live as a Christian.

Listen to this: THEY ARE WASHED AWAY. If you sin and sin and sin and sin constantly, doing the same thing, these are WASHED AWAY by the Blood of the Lamb. You can sin now and ask for forgiveness and then sin in the next moment and then ask for forgiveness. God doesn’t count your sins, He washes them away. We count them. He doesn’t. When God looks at you He sees you as righteous because you are in Christ.

Your sins are washed away. Washed away, washed away, washed away.

It’s so hard to really believe it, isn’t it? We want to constantly add conditions. Are you sorry enough for your sins? Are you determined to stop doing them? Did you repent properly? Did you do all the acts of penance correctly?

The promise is that Jesus washes away our sins if we ask. It’s really simple. When I first decided to believe in Christ I asked God to forgive me of my sins and he did so. I didn’t have to worry about all this other stuff. I simply repented and that was that. Why should I have to worry about it now?

His mercies are new each morning. His steadfast love never fails. (Lamentations 3:22, 23.)

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Alan

Ryan Peter

At a cursory glance of those verses two things stick out to me immediately:

1) No where does the passage talk about repentance, which is what I mean by “asking God for forgiveness”.

2) “deliberately go on sinning” or “willfully sinning” is not the same as sinning out of weakness. Romans 6, I believe, makes a clear case for that sort of definition. So does Strongs 🙂 (see here).

Generally, I believe that the ‘wilful’ sinner is the one who refuses to ask for forgiveness (repent) even though they know they are wrong. Or, they might ‘repent’ outwardly but not inwardly. The difference is empty religion / going through the motions versus relationship.

A wilful sinner is not the same as one who enjoys his sin due to a weakness. Here, he may think that he is a wilful sinner because he wilfully does the act in the moment of weakness, or even premeditates the act due to his weakness, but the whole thing is a result of a weakness.

1 John 3:4 talks about making a ‘practice’ of sinning. That sounds to me as if someone has chosen to discipline themselves to sin in a certain way. Deliberately making something a habit. That’s pretty hard core, deciding that you will deliberately add a certain sin to your daily lifestyle etc. No one who does that can be said to be repenting of anything at all.

However, in my case I may repent for something but here is a particular argument that usually pops in my head — whether it comes from the accuser Satan or contemporary evangelical theology, I’m not sure.

But the Bible doesn’t measure one’s repentance by whether or not it’s the millionth time they’ve done that sin. Nowhere when repentance is mentioned in the Bible is the question of, “how true is your repentance?” ever mentioned. Maybe because the Bible views repentance as a relational act rather than an outward act of penance.

How can one measure repentance anyway?

It is true that God will not break a bruised reed (Isaiah 42:3) and blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3). These are the weak people, of whom I count myself as one, who do not need to be told to delve into endless introspection and worry about how true their repentance is, but to accept repentance at face value. I never worried about how ‘true’ my repentance was when I first got saved, why should I now?

Alan

Yes, I like Thomas’ take on this. It’s a quandary, but maybe it’s best to follow Christ’s example. His words, teachings and parables were simply without any disclaimer!

I have two thoughts which may help:

1. If someone are concerned about the possibility of them being guilty of having committed the unforgivable sin, then they could not have committed it.
It is when they just don’t care whether they have or haven’t that they are guilty. Sadly that is the moment when they don’t feel guilty at all – at least in that shallow, sensual, numb sense.

2. I have begun to think of salvation as something which is given freely and which God will never take away; and yet, like any gift, it can be lost.
It is, at its most basic, a relational commodity.
In that sense forgiveness is not like credits in heaven waiting for you – although our reward is very much like that. Salvation, especially my assurance of salvation, is given to me right here on earth. I can’t trade it for a certain number of sins.
I keep it by keeping short accounts of forgiveness with God, and by remaining obedient to Him and allowing God’s Spirit to change me.
It is only possible to loose it by utter neglect, tantamount to abandonment. And that will only happen on the rarest of occasions.

Ryan Peter

Also, ‘repentance’ has come to mean something largely negative in many people’s language, rather than something positive. Sometimes it’s good just to rephrase it, I believe.

Alan — “2. I have begun to think of salvation as something which is given freely and which God will never take away; and yet, like any gift, it can be lost.”

You’d have to define what you mean by ‘salvation’ (broad, I understand) and ‘lost’ in this context. It’s true that I can ‘lose’ a gift in the sense that I’ve misplaced it, but it nevertheless still belongs to me, regardless of where I’ve put it. The real clincher, in this case, is whether ‘losing’ the gift equates to punishment, even one in hell?